Tuesday, June 29, 2010

When I’m in need of a dinosaur my tendencyis to turn on the TV and flip the stations untilI find one where an episode of The Flintstonesis playing, then I wait until a scene with Dinocomes on and I laugh and I feel all right again.Sometimes I get what I want, and sometimesI don’t, and I think that’s a good thing exceptwhen there’s something I really want that I can’tget by turning on the TV and waiting. Usuallyit’s not a thing that I want or an object buta situation, a thought that I’m missing or anidea that won’t go away no matter where I goor how often I say the words I’m OK or thesetrees are pretty or go shove it up your ass.I think the world is a beautiful place sometimesbut I also like to think about it not being thereor me not being here and wonder what existencewould be like if the world was not solipsistic butits opposite, and the only things that exist are thethings other people think of. How awful that wouldbe, and why did my mind create such a horribleplace, where someone else has to tell you that you’realive, that these trees are green, and that your ass isa repository for solid objects? Dino, you are a dinosaur in acartoon, but would you be offended if I told youthat you are more dog than dinosaur, that your behavioris more like that of those modern domesticated animalswe call our pets or, if you’re strange, our companionanimals? You know, someone once told me that inGerman the words Rush Limbaugh mean eitheropen my anal cavity, Leonard or stretch my nipplesto infinity or I love these drugs more than I love America.He wasn’t quite sure, but I believed him. I had no reason not to.

NYDC BLUES: How I Tried To Escape The Sick World Of Poetry (1995)

New York: it was where I did my first poetry slam. It was where I began to get my work published regularly. It was where I first appeared on national television. It was where I fell truly in love for the first time. It was where for the first time in my life I felt I was in a city where I belonged. It was also where, after having cast off the last vestiges of my youthful insanity, I vowed to give up poetry completely.

About Me

José Padua’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Bomb, Salon.com, Exquisite Corpse, Another Chicago Magazine, Unbearables, Crimes of the Beats, Up is Up, but So Is Down: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, and many other journals and anthologies. He has also written features and reviews for NYPress, Washington City Paper, the Brooklyn Rail and the New York Times. He has read his work at the Lollapalooza Festival, CBGBs, the Knitting Factory, the Black Cat Club, the Public Theater, the Washington Project for the Arts, and many other venues.